This is Wildhttps://thisiswild.co.uk
Slow journalism from the real countryThu, 22 Feb 2018 04:36:26 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngThis is Wildhttps://thisiswild.co.uk
Decaying Defences of the Second World Warhttps://thisiswild.co.uk/2015/07/15/bunkerdown/
https://thisiswild.co.uk/2015/07/15/bunkerdown/#respondWed, 15 Jul 2015 14:00:32 +0000http://thisiswild.co.uk/?p=103What would have happened if Germany had invaded Britain during the Second World War? General Sir Edmund Ironside was charged with overseeing the creation of defensive lines across the south of England to prevent invading forces reaching the capital. Pillboxes, anti-tank fortifications and military camps were built at a frantic pace during the summer of 1940. They became operational just once in September that year.

Many of these defences can still be found across Surrey around Mole Valley, Dorking and Reigate. Below are a series of photos by archaeologist Chris Shepheard.

A rural community radio station deep in the Surrey Hills is offering a guiding light for wannabe authors. ‘So You Want To Be A Writer’ is a weekly show hosted by Peter Snell, a Bookseller, and Roz Morris, an Author. It’s recorded in Peter’s ‘Barton’s Bookshop’ in Leatherhead. It features the pair using their experience to give advice on becoming a writer and getting published.

The show plays out on Surrey Hills Radio but also has an international following online. The pair pick a subject each week to discuss giving listeners an ‘insider’s view’ of the publishing industry.

The show opens with a (usually strange) song picked by Roz. The latest episode features Echo & The Bunnymen – People are Strange to mark Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell’s adaption for TV. After a quick argument about pronunciation (No-rell? Norull?) they talk about books being adapted for the big screen. It turns out Peter’s wife can’t bear to watch the Hobbit films as she loves the books so much she doesn’t want her mental image of them ruined.

I visited the shop to find out more about the show. Peter tells me “I don’t know why I came up with the idea about doing this but we just thought it might work. Truth be told it’s just a chance for Roz to play weird music on the airwaves.”

I asked Roz if being a Writer is a little like being a Doctor at a dinner party. Instead of everyone wanting to discuss their ailments with you they are asking how they can get published as an author. “It’s a very attractive thing – one day I will make this piece of me. People can carry book ideas around in their heads for years.”

Despite the programme’s hyper-local roots, digital broadcasting has allowed it to appeal to a global audience. As it broadcasts Peter tells me they have listeners from around the world messaging them on Facebook. He lists them by name – “Janice in Venice, Tina in Canada, EJ in new Mexico!”

Roz Morris

When I visited the shop they were recording amongst the bookshelves. Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Chain’ opens the show. They talk about the different ways authors can get published and they have a playful chemistry as they speak.

After they finish recording someone from the radio station comes in and asks if they can have the microphone back. It’s needed by the DJ about to broadcast.

While they pack up I find out more about Roz. She’s an Author with a vivacious personality and waves of red hair. It’s quite likely you have read one of her books without realising. As a ghost writer she’s sold millions of paperbacks with alter egos such as a member of the SAS, a rock star’s bodyguard and a City executive.

What was it that drew her to writing? “I was always fascinated by the way stories worked. How did words make me feel that?”

Roz also offers her services as a ‘book doctor,’ helping people refine their writing.

“As a writer you’ll have blind spots. There will be things you have done really really well but things you don’t know anything about.

Few people have their first meetings documented in a book. When I ask how they met, Peter wanders up to the counter and picks up a copy of ‘Opening Up to Indie Authors.’ He begins reading –

Barton’s Bookshop is exactly the sort of place a bibliophile would dream of when they think of an indie bookshop. It’s an eccentric place with painted white ornaments hanging from the window. A large wooden dragon hangs from the ceiling and a huge scruffy toy bear sits by a fireplace. The smell of coffee fills the shop as Peter’s machine crackles into life.

He looks an awful lot like Father Christmas, something he’s all too aware of (he does actually double as Santa around Christmas time).

Peter Snell

Like many others, he’s loved books from an early age – “I’ve spent my whole life reading. I don’t even really recall learning to read. I remember falling down a staircase and hitting my head on the radiator because I was reading.”

I ask Peter more about running the bookshop. “I’m a firm believer that there is no such thing as someone who doesn’t read. It’s just people who haven’t found the right book yet.”

He proudly tells me that he often urges parents of children who refuse to read to come in and spend an hour or so with him. He asks them about their lives, what they like and dislike, what makes them tick. He then chooses a few books for them and so far has hooked every child on reading.

Books aren’t just a way of making a living for Peter. They saved his life.

He spent his early career in finance. He also trained as a teacher and became a programmer for IBM. Life became difficult for him – “I became really rather ill. I was sleeping 23 hours a day and thought life was coming to an end. But I began working in a book shop. Initially just for an hour a day as therapy.” He gradually started working more and more hours until after a few years he became manager.

When the owner wanted to retire Peter’s wife bought the business for him. He now spends the day surrounded by books, his coffee machine brewing, talking to people all day about novels. Is the really as wonderful as it sounds?

“It’s almost the perfect job – if only it paid well!”

Listen to my full interview with Peter and Roz below –

]]>https://thisiswild.co.uk/2015/06/16/wannabeawriter/feed/551.296407 -0.33112051.296407-0.331120So You Want To Be A Writer?editorwildukSo You Want To Be A Writer?Roz MorrisWriting Tips From Roz MorrisPeter SnellBooks Are My BagThe Wild Manifestohttps://thisiswild.co.uk/2015/05/19/wildmanifesto/
https://thisiswild.co.uk/2015/05/19/wildmanifesto/#respondTue, 19 May 2015 09:57:43 +0000http://thisiswild.co.uk/?p=64Wild is a new national journalism and broadcasting service devoted exclusively to the story of rural life.

Our mission is to give a voice to Britain’s biggest minority – the people who live and work in the British countryside and the millions more who visit wild places for fun, space and inspiration.

We will use the power of digital media to tell the real story of rural Britain, giving country lovers a stronger sense of community worth and a greater voice in national life.

Wild will use whatever tools we have to tell a story. That means video reports, documentaries, reportage, podcasts, live blogs, great photography and challenging journalism updated daily and available on our site.

We believe in journalism is a force for good. We can tell stories for a better world. So we practise Slow Journalism and Solutions Storytelling.

Wild is interested in how rural life works; how communities and landscapes thrive. Our stories will focus on potential solutions to problems rather than how things break down.

When we say our mission is to give a voice to Britain’s biggest minority, we mean that literally. Wherever possible, we will encourage country people to tell their own story in their own words.

Our journalists are independent, non-partisan and expert in the best tradition of British public service broadcasting.

Wild’s founders are trained in national television, newspapers and digital journalism. They also live in the British countryside and have a personal family stake in a better future for wild places.

For us, rural life is not just a big story in times of crisis and catastrophe.

It’s the only story…all of the time.

]]>https://thisiswild.co.uk/2015/05/19/wildmanifesto/feed/0Isle of WighteditorwildukHow to Help the Hedgehoghttps://thisiswild.co.uk/2015/05/19/helpthehedgehog/
https://thisiswild.co.uk/2015/05/19/helpthehedgehog/#respondTue, 19 May 2015 09:55:40 +0000http://thisiswild.co.uk/?p=62TV Presenter Michaela Strachan has warned that Hedgehogs are declining so quickly that they may die out within ten years.

“Hedgehogs are declining at the same rate as tigers,” she told Radio Times. “They’re in critical danger, particularly in London. If we don’t do anything about them they will be gone in ten years.”

Hedgehogs need plenty of space to forage. Their habitats are being squeezed by urban sprawl giving them less of the room they need to survive. Suburbs actually provide a perfect habitat for them, but garden fences and household pets prevent them from moving around freely.

It’s a surprisingly cold morning in June 2002. The iron clad wooden doors of the Booth Museum of Natural History in Brighton haven’t been open long. A dishevelled figure is sheltering in the lobby beside the large stuffed bear that watches over every visitor. As I pass through on the way to the shed installation where I’m working as writer in residence, the figure leans towards me from the shadows and, Ancient Mariner style, ‘almost holds me with a skinny hand’.

“Are you Shedman?” he asks.
“Yes…”
“Good,” he says. “Because I know where there’s the best shed in the world…”

A few months earlier I decided to apply for an Arts Council Funded competition to be ‘a writer in residence in a place of architectural interest.’ After considering the West Pier and the Pavilion, I remembered the Booth, the quaint natural history museum on the way out of Brighton toward’s Devil’s Dyke. I arranged to see John Cooper, the Curator, who took me on a guided tour and told me a little of its history.

Built in 1874 by ornithologist Edward Booth, the museum is stacked from floor to ceiling with glass cases full of dead birds displayed in diorama of their natural habitats. Booth shot all the birds as he hoped to display every type of bird found in the British Isles. With only one or two exceptions he succeeded. Creatures frozen in time (and some in preserving fluid) peer out from every cupboard and shelf. There’s a slightly disconcerting smell, like a morgue. Aware of the stringent criteria of the competition I asked John Cooper if the building had any architectural value. “Yes indeed,” he said. “It’s a listed building. And…” he added confidentially, “…it’s listed as a shed.”

Over dinner that evening I told my wife about my day. “That sounds good,” she said. “You’ve always liked sheds. You could build a shed in the museum and write in it, and people could come to see you.”

So that’s exactly what I did.

John Davies – Shedman

But the thing about Shedman is, he’s not what he seems. A lot of people think Shedman is just about sheds, the little wooden building on the edge of the garden. But I’m a poet, fascinated by language, so Shedman is as much about the word ‘shed’ and all its different meanings.

‘Shed’ construction is the dominant form of modern architecture in the shedlands on the periphery of cities. The ‘shedding’ of blood or light, tears or joy is the stuff of poetry. And there are connections with natural history – the ‘sheds’ of insects and animals (skins, antlers and shells). The Shedman project is a unique mixture of language, architecture and nature – on that periphery where words meet the built environment and countryside, the tame and the wild.

A typical shed can be the gateway to memories, a store of secrets and a dumping ground. It can be an observatory on nature. It’s a place halfway between home and the wilderness, between order and chaos, between the artificial and the natural. A shed is down to earth and unpretentious. Sheds are very close to British hearts and we enjoy remembering and celebrating them. They’re so like us – transient and fragile.

Whatever the reason for our fascination with sheds, they exert a magnetic attraction on anyone who passes by.

A shed is both a container and a threshold. It’s a space of creative inspiration and endeavour, as it has been for dozens of writers, composers and artists from Mozart to Dylan Thomas, and for generations of model makers, woodworkers and engineers. But it can also be a zone of adventure and experiment, where people first try smoking, drinking alcohol or taking drugs. For some couples in the first half of the twentieth century a shed was where they first tasted sexual pleasure. But it can also be a darker and more dangerous place, where the Unabomber concocted his explosives, bodies are hidden in freezers, trophies kept.

Whatever the reason for our fascination with sheds, they exert a magnetic attraction on anyone who passes by. When the shed door is open we’re all deeply curious to look inside. My shed is very accessible. Anyone can come in to tell me their shed stories, to bring anecdotes and poems, pictures and photos, recollections and fantasies. A shed is a great way of engaging people with poetry, creative writing and the natural world in an enjoyable and intriguing way.

I’m very grateful to my wife, as Shedman led me to a new career now in its twelfth year. Shedman has taken me on adventures far and near – to run writing workshops in schools and colleges, hospitals and galleries, to attend festivals at home and abroad, to work on special commissions of new work, and to meet hundreds of fascinating people who have told me their shed stories.

There was the man who set fire to the family shed when a boy – and to his mother as she tried to put the fire out! There was the elderly aristocratic gentleman who guiltily confessed to stealing a dinky toy from another boy’s shed over seventy years ago. There’s was the young man who remembered the munitions his friend’s granddad kept in a shed that eventually blew up. People have told me dozens of stories about the wildlife to be found in or near sheds.

Then there was the man who knew the best shed in the world.

But that story will have to wait till next time…
You can meet Shedman at Ledbury Poetry Festival 3-12 July 2015. You can find him online at www.shedman.net or on Twitter @Shedman.

We meet Peter Snell, the owner of Barton’s Bookshop in Leatherhead. He speaks about how the bookshop becomes part of the community. It’s a place where people gossip, where people go to find support, or to escape to another world.

Peter Snell

The shop is a unique place where Peter’s own idiosyncrasies shine. In the window is a collection of bric-a-brac that Peter created after visiting Holland.

‘Digital economy’ – two words on the lips of many politicians. They say all connections need to be super-fast and extra-reliable. But is enough being done in rural areas?

The aim of £530 million of public sector investment is for 95% of the UK to have high speed connections (at least 24Mbps) by 2017.

But what about the remaining 5%? Promises only go so far as providing basic 2Mbps broadband speeds for all. People can do simple things like email but anything else such as sending photos or streaming video becomes impossible. Indeed, OFCOM says that getting proper use from the modern web requires a connection of no less than 8 Mbps.

The UK is the 11th most connected country on the planet according to the Internet Society. It ranks a sluggish 23rd when it comes to speed of its fixed connections. But the stats are even worse when it comes to mobile internet speeds. When on on the move, you’d be better off using your phone in Puerto Rico, Latvia and Columbia than the UK.

This matters because fast internet isn’t about letting kids in the countryside watch cat videos on YouTube. OFCOM says fast internet is “critical” to the UK’s economic success. Neelie Kroes, the Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, says a better distribution of broadband speeds can boost GDP by between 1 and 1.5%.

So what solutions should the UK be investing in for rural communities?

Wifi in the sky

A network of balloons travelling 12 miles above the Earth’s surface could beam internet to isolated communities. This isn’t a dream – Project Loon from Google would partner with telecommunications companies to do just that.

Wifi in the Sky

According to its slick online presentation “balloons relay wireless traffic from cell phones and other devices back to the global Internet using high-speed links.”

Balloons may be great at a five-year-old’s birthday party, but there are drawbacks to this lofty scheme. In May 2013 one of Google Loon’s balloons fell to earth and crashed into power lines near the U.S. city of Portland, according to Yakima Herald-Republic. Nobody was harmed but it did knock out power in some homes. Google says each balloon has a parachute which can be deployed in case of an unexpected landing.

Is such a high-flying ‘solution’ necessary?

“I think it’s both secure and viable,” says Tim Stevens, CNET’s Editor at Large. “The only question in my mind is cost, and can it be deployed in a place that has the right mix of absence of other forms of connectivity yet a high enough population density to make a deployment worthwhile.”

Wifi on TV

Rather than pioneer the skies, another potential solution comes from using ‘white space’ which is essentially unused TV channels. Microsoft is already rolling out schemes using the technology in Tanzania and Kenya using solar-powered base stations to make internet affordable on a continent where broadband remains out of reach for 80% of people.

A major benefit of serving wifi through the ‘spectrum’ is that the signal can easily penetrate obstacles like walls. This is vital for getting people online in areas where you have to drive to see your next-door neighbour, as fewer access points are needed to cover the same area as conventional wifi.

A trial of this technology took place in 2011 by a six-partner consortium on the Scottish Isle of Bute. It had some success by using the local telephone exchange to bring connectivity to eight local homes. The consortium’s final report states; “the trial on Bute has…successfully demonstrated the potential of white space technology through the use of real-world applications such as video streaming and video conferencing.”

This approach could also go beyond homes and businesses, according to OFCOM, and even serve internet to ships off the Orkney Islands.

Yet this route would be tapping into frequencies that are used for things like digital TV and wireless microphones. While experts say there is plenty of signal to go around, a system of automatically sharing the signal needs to be devised before this concept goes ahead on a meaningful scale.

Animal Adoption

Sheep could also be the answer for isolated communities looking for information or social interaction. Researchers from Lancaster University have been developing connectivity collars which would gather information on how the animals move around certain areas in search of grazing spots. The neckpieces could also be used to transmit wifi to flocks of humans.

The project has been awarded £171,495 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and hopes to help environmentalists better understand problems like flooding and agricultural pollution.

Sheep-powered internet may sound mad and it has its problems. Sheep are social animals and move around in flocks. This makes it easy to see how a network of connections could be transmitted easily between the sheep, but harder to see how a signal could be provided to a wide area.

Elsewhere, other animals have been considered for this type of solution. The Saami population in Swedish Lapland, who migrate through the seasons with their reindeer flock, have experimented with Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN). This technology relies on hardware like flash memory which can store lots of data and survive long periods without power. It’s a specific solution for a specific population, and one which is unlikely to help those living in rural England.

]]>https://thisiswild.co.uk/2015/05/18/baaband/feed/0Sheep and Balloons Bring WiFi to Rural BritaineditorwildukSheep and Balloons Bring WiFi to Rural BritainWifi in the SkyA Potter in Blackhillshttps://thisiswild.co.uk/2015/05/18/hairypotter/
https://thisiswild.co.uk/2015/05/18/hairypotter/#respondMon, 18 May 2015 09:40:50 +0000http://thisiswild.co.uk/?p=22John Christie has been making pots for nearly 50 years. After studying ceramics at the Liverpool College of Art he went to Turkey and Iran to research ceramic techniques. This video explores his techniques and philosophy and records the firing of his 50 cubic foot wood­-fired kiln in the north east of Scotland.

The pots are made by hand, glazed to his own recipes using local materials.

John Christie

His pots reflect something about him and reflect the environment they are born in. They reflect the generations of pots that came before them. Despite the remoteness of his workshop he uses ecommerce to support his business. He sells his work on his website and on an Etsy store.